


Drowning in Blue

by Her_Madjesty



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Adventure, Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Pirates of the Caribbean Fusion, F/M, Gen, Inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean, Pining, Pirates, Politics, Unbalanced Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 06:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12451735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty
Summary: "I never knew," Lady Vaganov says to her son, "that there were so many Russians seeking refuge in this port."Or:A "Pirates of the Caribbean"!AU.





	Drowning in Blue

**Author's Note:**

> The first few paragraphs of this story had me on Wikipedia for about half an hour. For all that I love this piece, I still may delete it because it's wildly nerdy. And I'm saying that about a pirate!AU.
> 
> I hope you'll forgive the extended, alternative history presented in this story that I made up in order to get a bunch of Russians down to the Caribbean in the mid-1600s. Likewise, I hope the variations on character names won't be too off-putting. Please, please let me know what you think once you've finished reading. This piece was a delight, but I'm definitely anxious about it.
> 
> XOXO

The Vaganov family comes to the East India Company through dubious means. The First Northern War takes Lieutenant Anatoli Vaganov, along with his exceedingly pregnant wife, to the front lines in Poland. When Lady Vaganov gives birth, Anatoli abandons the rule of the tsar and escorts her to Germany, then further west into France. They stop on the coast near the English Channel, where Gleb Vaganov the Second, named for his grandfather, spends the first twelve years of his life.

By the time Alexis Mikhailovich comes looking for his deserters, the Vaganovs – or the Vachons, to their neighbors – are able to pay for passage to the New World. They board with the reluctant captain of the English trader, _Hector_ , and sail for two months in order to reach the over-hot shores of Jamaica.

Anatoli struggles to keep down food on the journey across the sea, but his keen eye for the ship’s inventory leads him to befriend the ship’s quartermaster, one Theodore Groves. When the lot of them are left to sweat on the Jamaican docks, Groves guides Anatoli into Fort Charles. When Anatoli returns to his family, the Vachons have rooms on Groves’ plantation, and Anatoli has a job.

Gleb turns thirteen in the middle of the Atlantic. He spends the next year fighting off sun stroke and swearing in French at the English boys who hide in Groves’ fields of sugar cane. His mother often finds him stalking the edge of the property, where his angry brow draws concerned looks from the men and women in Groves’ fields (not concerned, Lady Vaganov knows, for her son’s safety, but rather for their own).

She’s relieved, if unsurprised, when Gleb takes up with men from the fort. They call him George, and he hates them for it, but he learns to swear in English as well as to speak the language properly. To reward him for his patience, his mother calls him into her room late at night and teaches him to swear in Russian, as well. He’s a capital swearer by the time he turns sixteen, long-limbed and tanner than any Russian should be. There’s hardly a trace of his mother country left him in save for the curl of his tongue around his vowels and the last name on his mother’s marriage certificate, unseen save for his and his father’s eyes.

He goes to work under one of Groves’ acquaintances in the company and takes to the sea more ably than his father. By the time he’s eighteen, Gleb – never George – is a lieutenant under Ian Mercer aboard the _HMS Swallow_ in the East India Company’s private army. By twenty, and despite the dying traces of a Russian accent, the naval recruits spread rumors of his potential ascension into the offices held by the lords of the Jamaican company branch.

*

The twenty first year of Gleb’s life begins auspiciously, which is to say three events of merit occur within two weeks of each other and send the East India Company – and Gleb – into a tail spin:

  1. Port Royal is sacked by a ship known as the _Black Pearl_ and her hoard of assorted pirates.
  2. The granddaughter of a notable French family, a false count, and an imprisoned merchant previously employed by the company go missing.
  3. Anatoli Vaganov dies.



Gleb is not present at his father’s funeral, too busy chasing the ex-merchant and his traitorous pack across the Caribbean. When he returns to Jamaica, captives in tow, his mother is a pale shadow of her former self. She will only speak to him in Russian, and Gleb, exhausted, starving, and full of righteous rage, doesn’t have the patience to try and communicate with her. He finds himself promoted to a captainship and, in turn, schedules a hanging for the merchant – the _pirate_ \- he’s retrieved.

The day he’s meant to hang, the ex-merchant, of course, escapes.

Gleb tries to arrest the false count and woman who have freed him and is overruled by his superior, one Commodore James Norrington. He slinks back to his office in the fort and cradles his head in his hands, body thrumming with energy and rage.

Gleb spends that night on the docks, flipping rocks into Port Royal’s bay.

Two days later, James Norrington sets out on the _HMS Dauntless_ to chase the same criminal he let escape. Gleb watches him go and does not pity him as his career begins to plummet.

He sees the false count with infuriating regularity in the months that follow. So too does he see the woman – an heiress to another sugar plantation, French with a long history. She has family, the rumors say, living in French Florida, but her grandmother lives in Jamaica, and Anya Romilly seems loathed to be separated from her when not accompanying pirates around the greater Caribbean.

Gleb sees her one day, down on the docks. She’s dressed in too many layers to be comfortable, but he’s grown familiar with the sight of the impractical women’s dress that seems to be in fashion, these days. He’s in between meetings, one with the governor and another at the fort, but he lingers at the sight of her. She cuts a fine figure amongst the rags and bruising skin of the merchants and military men. A part of him loathes her, but another -

Well. He is only a man.

Still, he cannot explain why, instead of glancing and walking past, he slows, then adjusts his course to come and stand beside her on the edge of a long pier.

She glances at him sidelong as he joins her. One of her strawberry blonde brows arches upward, a question without words.

Gleb doesn’t bother offering a response. Instead, he studies the lapping of the waves and the distant speck on the horizon that is, no doubt, a company ship returning to berth.

It’s rude.

He doesn’t care.

“Are you here to arrest me, captain?” Anya’s accent speaks to long exposure to the French, but her vowels are too long, just a touch foreign. Gleb tilts his head and doesn’t wonder why it sounds familiar.

“I don’t have a warrant,” he admits, “but if you have a confession, I’m sure we could work something out.”

He doesn’t mean to make it funny, but still, Anya laughs. “Not today,” she says, hands folded serenely behind her back. She looks for all the world like an officer instead of an heiress.

Gleb does his best not to stare. “Who are you waiting for?” he asks when the silence between them grows.

Anya doesn’t look at him, but the contentment on her face morphs into something coy. “I said no confessions, did I not, captain?”

Gleb forces himself to smile, but the amusement in his stomach begins to sour. “You did, indeed,” he says. “Then perhaps I will simply have to keep an eye on you in the days to come.”

He begins to walk away, at that, but comes to a stop as Anya speaks. “Remind me of your last name, captain?” She phrases it like a question, but Gleb knows he has no choice but to respond.

“Vachon.”

“No.” Anya’s tsk is a pretty thing. “Your real one.”

It’s not the heat that brings a flush to Gleb’s face, though he’ll lie to himself about the cause, later. He looks back over his shoulder, back straight, shoulders tense, and loses his breath as he’s caught up in blue.

Anya’s eyes are the same shade as the sea behind her.

“Excuse me?”

Anya tilts her head and considers him as though he’s become particularly amusing. “Your real name,” she repeats. “I’ll tell you mine, captain, if you tell me yours.”

Despite himself, Gleb feels his mouth start to quirk upward. “I thought you said no confessions.”

“You’ve already said you’re not here to arrest me.” Somehow, even her shrug is elegant. “My last name is not among the many misdeeds you might see me charged with.”

Gleb snorts. He hesitates for a moment and resists the urge to crack his knuckles. “Vaganov,” he says, at last.

Anya hums, thoughtful. “Romanov,” she replies.

Gleb’s connection with his Russian heritage has been relegated to his mother’s stories and his early-learned swears; he makes little of the lineage she implies. When he doesn’t react, Anya’s eyebrow quirks all the higher.

“Well, Ms. Romanov,” Gleb says, readjusting his stance, “take care to stay out of trouble today, won’t you?”

“We’ll see.” He can hear her disregard for his request in her voice, and it makes him want to twitch. “If I don’t, I’ll do my best to ensure that you don’t hear about it until tomorrow.”

“Your considerate nature has been noted,” Gleb replies. He starts to walk, after that, and the thundering of his boots against the dock drowns out Anya’s aborted laughter.

*

Anya, he discovers, once the night has passed, is a woman who is true to her word. A notice arrives while he sits at his desk the next morning: the ex-merchant James Norrington has failed to apprehend has returned to Port Royal. He is set, it seems, to marry one Anya Romilly within the fortnight; the two applied for a marriage license the previous day and have had their request approved by some sympathetic judge. Either that, or the signature on the license has been forged by a man standing in for a judge – and Gleb has his suspicions.

(They prove him right, in the long run.)

Regardless, he stands itching and at the ready as his superiors plan. Word has come down from one of the company’s lords: the ex-merchant is to be taken into custody once more, preferably by a competent officer. The capture of his fiancée and their judge will merit a reasonable reward, but it is the pirate who the lords of the company table want most.

“Captain Vachron,” Ian Mercer calls, directing the attention of his peers to the corner where Gleb stands, watching. “I believe that this will be a task perfectly suited for you.”

“Thank you, sir.” Gleb reminds himself not to smile, but some of his satisfaction must creep into his tone. Ian Mercer looks amused. “I believe that you’re correct.”

The company provides him with three warrants: one for Anya Romilly, one for Vernell Popov, and a third for Dominic Poole. Gleb examines the warrants, then, in a fit of nostalgia, runs them by his mother on a brief visit home.

His mother, for the first time in several years, summons the energy to sound coy. “I never knew,” she informs him, “that there would be so many Russians seeking refuge in this port.”

Thus, when Gleb slinks into St. Peter's Church to apprehend his villains, he addresses the pirate scum as Dmitry and relishes the man’s pale shock.

The day is wet. Thunder rumbles overhead. Gleb flicks the water from his hat and pulls the warrants from his coat, all the while ignoring the muted fury tucked behind Anya Romanov’s eyes.

“What are the charges?” she demands. It is difficult for Gleb to ignore her, but he does his best, focusing instead on the satisfactory jingle of company restraints as they click around Dmitry’s wrists.

The guards to the right of him begin to shuffle. Gleb disregards another cry from Anya as a man comes jogging forward: large, perhaps, but swift and adorned with a white wig that clearly does not belong to him.

“I am a representative of this clergy,” he claims, “and a friend to the family Romilly. These two are under my authority, and you will inform _me_ of the charges placed against them, if nothing else.”

Gleb glances over to his men and decides, for a moment, to play along. “I have a warrant here for the arrest of one Dominic Poole,” he says, passing the warrant over to the poorly-disguised Popov. “The charges, though many, include piracy, smuggling, impersonating an officer of the English Royal Navy, looting, poaching – and, as you might guess, the list goes on.”

Popov snatches the warrant and peers through thin glasses at the ink. When he glances up, the furrow between his brows has deepened. “This is a warrant for Anya Romilly.”

“Oh, is it? That’s annoying.” As he turns, Gleb feels a genuine shock of regret shoot through his chest. “Arrest her, would you?”

He sees one man duck his head and hide a smile as Anya protests. Gleb watches the man with care and doesn’t take his eyes off of him until Anya is clapped in irons but otherwise unmolested.

“Here, then, is the one for Mr. Poole,” he says, passing it blithely to Popov. “Though why he would try to pass himself as English – that I don’t understand.”

“For the same reason you try to pass yourself as French.” This comes from Anya, though it has less of an effect on his men than Gleb is sure she anticipated. None of them so much as blink as they step away from her.

Gleb answers her shocked expression with a quirk of a brow. “As I’m sure your acquaintance here can attest, there are benefits to the assumption of new identities.”

Popov colors, at that. The moment he tries to protest, sputtering, Gleb pulls out his third warrant, and his men move forward once more.

The gratification he feels at seeing the three of them in irons is – inappropriate, likely, though it lacks the pure taste of victory in the wake of Anya’s glower. “Away with them,” he bites out, retrieving the warrants back from Popov’s bound hands. “Report back to me once they’ve settled into Fort Charles.”

He lingers in the church as his men depart. The wedding seems as though it was meant to be a delicate, albeit quick, affair. Gleb catches himself staring the shadow of Anya’s wedding dress as the woman herself is escorted out of sight.

He steals a flower from her abandoned bouquet before starting back towards the fort.

By the time he returns, the rain has stopped, and Ian Mercer is waiting for him in his office. They make quick work of their business: Dominic Poole will hanging in the morning, followed by Popov.

“Romilly’s grandmother will likely come for her,” Mercer sneers (and Gleb shifts, hoping the man can’t discern his possession of her flower, now tucked into the inner pocket of his coat). “Regardless of how she’s behaved, it would be hard for us to get away with hanging a woman.”

Gleb tries to make his responding grunt disappointed as opposed to relieved. Mercer’s face remains bitter, so his level of success remains unclear. “Shall I prepare a statement for public release?”

“Something of the like.” Mercer pulls a leather swath from one of his pockets and sets it on the corner of Gleb’s desk. Gleb glances up at him and hesitates for a mere moment before reaching out.

Inside, he finds an unbound sheath of paper. Its bylines are unfilled, save for one near the bottom curl, which bears the wax seal and flourished signature of the Port Royal branch’s patron: Lord Cutler Beckett.

“What is this?”

“A gift,” Mercer sniffs, “for our Miss Romilly. Prepare it at your leisure. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to prepare it at all.”

Gleb looks back to his fellow captain, confusion painted across his brow.

“This was your capture, captain,” Mercer informs him. He taps the leather binding once. “Your responsibility. Her fate, should it not be hanging, is left in your just hands.” The phrase comes out almost jovial, and Gleb feels himself instinctively shrink away. Mercer grins, a slow, yellow thing, before he takes his leave.

Gleb stares after him as he goes and keeps his gaze fixed on his door for a long time after.

He stays late in his office that night, burning lantern oil while he examines the most recently delivered ships’ manifests. Lady Romilly has not come to retrieve her granddaughter, and despite himself, Gleb finds himself pacing, glancing out his windows towards Port Royal’s darkened roads, eyes peeled for the Romilly family carriage.

The hours pass. Still, no one comes.

When he finally grows sick of himself, Gleb abandons his post and makes his way up to Fort Charles’ battlements. The sea air is sharp and biting against his skin; it rouses him from his melancholy and nervousness, allows him to focuses on the crash of waves against Port Royal’s uneven shore.

It strikes him abruptly, his longing for the sea. He hasn’t left port since the misadventure with his current captives. It makes him ache, the desire to feel wood rocking beneath his feet. To chase, to deliver, it doesn’t matter; Gleb runs a hand through his hair and vows, in the middle of the night, that as soon as the morning’s endeavors are over, he will rid himself of this island and be off to somewhere better.

He returns to his office bolstered. The gentle sway of the door in the evening breeze doesn’t faze him, nor does the flickering of his lantern. He shuts the door behind him and moves forward with confidence, faltering only as he makes his way closer to his desk.

Nothing is too amiss; the arrangement is off so slightly that, were it a less auspicious night, he’d attribute the shift to the wind. His papers, however, have been ruffled, and Mercer’s leather bound gift has disappeared from the mess.

Gleb hears someone move in the darkness and goes tense. “Who’s there?”

He turns and sees a shadow detach itself from the wall next to his door.

Anya Romilly – Romanov – is still wearing her wedding dress, though the elaborate knot of her hair has long come undone. She holds Mercer’s leather casing close to her chest, though she keeps on hand delicately behind her back.

Gleb stares. Blinks. Forces himself to focus. “I’ll admit, you’re not the one I was expecting.”

“No, I suppose not.” Her tone is light, but Gleb can detect no hint of a smile on her face. She sidles nearer to him, attempting to circle in a room that won’t allow her to.

Gleb holds as still as he can, a man faced with prey who has suddenly become the predator. “Is there something I can do for you?” he asks, all the while hoping his face is the picture of boredom.

(It’s not.)

Anya taps her fingers across Mercer’s binding. “This is quite a kind offer on the part of your company,” she says, not quite sneering. “I couldn’t quite tell, though, just who these papers were meant for.”

Gleb doesn’t take his eyes from her as she slips closer. “That remains to be determined.”

Anya smiles. It’s a feral thing. “Then let’s begin negotiations.”

Gleb’s gaze only drops when the hand behind Anya’s back slips into view. His breath catches as she slots a gun beneath his chin.

“I’m listening,” he manages, though his voice comes out hoarse. He feels weak in front of this keen-eyed woman, and yet he’s fixated not on the gun in her hand but on the soft glow of her cheeks and the unkind curl of her mouth.

“These papers bear the signature of your lord,” Anya says, “but they are otherwise incomplete.”

“They do require my signature, as well,” Gleb admits. “Though I’m surprised you found it necessary to wait for me to provide it, given the clever hand of your friend, Popov.”

Anya’s gun digs into his skin. Gleb feels his pulse quicken.

“I could still use him,” Anya threatens, “but it’s much harder to imitate your seal.”

Gleb hums in understanding. His gaze flickers to Anya’s lips again; she’s bitten them, perhaps in the midst of her captivity, and now the strain of their frowning has left them broken open and bleeding.

If she sees him staring, Anya doesn’t comment on it.

“And what,” Gleb says, after a minute of silence, “would I get, should I sign you into freedom?”

One of Anya’s brows arches upward. “You’d stay alive.”

“Ah, I see.” He doesn’t, actually, and the curiosity of it must show on his face, because Anya presses closer, bringing her heat and the gun with her. “And what of your friends down in their cells?”

The brief play of amusement over Anya’s face is captivating. “What makes you think they’re still there?”

“You want me to believe that you have no intention of following them, if they’ve escaped?”

Anya tilts her head to one side, considering and amused. “Surely you know the currency of reputation,” she says. “My poor grandmother has no doubt been confined to her bed due to my shocking behavior. Regardless of my plans for my future, wouldn’t it be best that I secure her wellbeing?”

“What a responsible charge you are.” It’s a kindness, Gleb realizes, that he wasn’t anticipating; nearly unselfish.

“Oh,” Anya sighs, shaking her head, “I wouldn’t go that far.”

She presses him back against the wall of his office. It hurts when she shoves Mercer’s papers against his chest. “Sign them,” she commands. “Make it quick, and then you can go on and pretend that I was never here.”

Gleb hesitates, then nods. The gun moves away from his chin, and Anya steps back to let him approach his desk. Gleb reaches for his inkstand without a thought, all the while clutching Mercer’s papers in his free hand.

“What’s to stop me from sending my guards after your friends once you’ve left my office?”

For a moment, there’s no response. “Nothing,” Anya says, at last. Gleb glances back at the sadness in her voice. She glowers at him, in turn, until he looks away.

“You have, in fact, only secured your own freedom with these papers,” he continues. “Those men will be hunted down once again. They will hang for their misdeeds, Ms. Romanov. You must know that.” He pauses, then completes the last loop of his last name. “Though perhaps I should be referring to you as ‘Mrs.’, now?”

The gun returns to the curve of his neck. “You shouldn’t,” Anya snaps, “given that you interrupted my wedding.”

“I did, indeed,” Gleb agrees. Even with the return of the cool metal to his skin, his hands don’t shake as he reaches out for his stick of wax. “When I run into your pirate next, then, should I expect to see you with him?”

It hurts to let the words leave his mouth, though Gleb can’t fathom the reason why. Wax drips down onto Anya’s documents. Gleb pulls his stick away, then presses down against the red flow with his company ring.

It takes him several moments to realize that Anya hasn’t answered. When he brings himself back to his full height, Gleb turns to look at her.

There’s uncertainty in her eyes, though her anger does much to hide it. Gun still held to his neck, she reaches out, palm up and expecting.

Gleb hands her papers back to her without any hesitation.

“You’ll just have to see, won’t you?” she says. Gleb watches as she inspects the mark he’s left and breathes properly only when her gun drops back to her side. She’s a vision drenched in moonlight; weapon at the ready, wedding dress ever so slightly torn.

When she looks back at him, her eyes are as he saw them the day before: the color of Port Royal’s bay on the most peaceful of days. “Thank you, captain,” Anya says. “Let us hope that our paths do not cross again in the near future.”

“On the contrary,” Gleb says, even as she begins to walk away. Anya doesn’t pause at the sound of his voice, but she does aim the barrel of her gun at his head. “I hope that I see you again rather soon, Ms. Romanov.”

To his surprise, Anya graces him with a blinding, fierce smile. Then, in between one heartbeat and the next, she disappears from his office.

Gleb closes his eyes.

He prides himself in his individuality, considers himself a unique and dutiful man amongst men ruled by their own petty emotions. His satisfaction in the announcement of James Norrington’s resignation solidified values he had long believed himself to hold dear: a rejection of reluctance, no honor in hesitation.

And still.

Anya Romanov leaves his office with the papers to secure her freedom, and Gleb...doesn’t call for his men. He breathes and falls heavily down into his chair. As the gas in his lamp starts to burn low, he reaches out and cuts off the light.

In the morning, news will reach him of Dominic’s – Dmitry’s – escape, along with that of the false Count Popov. Anya Romilly will appear in the marketplace, suitably distressed at the flight of her fiancée. Her grandmother will appear with her, and none of Gleb’s men will dare to approach either of them.

After a full day has passed, Anya will disappear from Port Royal.

Gleb himself will board the _HMS Sparrow_ in pursuit of the damnable pirates. Ian Mercer will accompany him for a short while until he is called back to port, and Gleb will find himself in line for another promotion.

He will press his stolen flower in between the pages of a journal that he’ll keep near his heart. In two months, the journal will stop one of Dmitry’s bullets from ending his life.

In the middle of this first night, however, Gleb stares at his shaking fingertips. He longs for the taste of the sea; for the soothing rock of a ship; for a life spent drowning in sharp, blue eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> For reference:
> 
> Anya Romilly - Anastasia Romanov  
> Dominic Poole - Dmitry [last name unclear]  
> Vernell Popov - Vlad Popov
> 
> I did my best to fact check all of the history referenced in this time period. Let me know what you thought!


End file.
